Problem: |
CB Richard Ellis, a
commercial real estate service company, assigned Brolin the task of
developing a standard Property Listings database for their 60+ Brokerage
offices located throughout the US. Each office needed to own and manage
their data independently of the other offices. With budgets, data volume,
and availability of IT staff varying significantly from office to office,
they needed a flexible solution that could be tailored to the unique
requirements of each office. |
Solution: |
Brolin's Generic
Database Object, GDO. GDO allows each office to choose a database engine
that meets their budget, data volume, and IT staffing requirements. The
smaller offices chose the Access MDB which could be loaded on their
existing Novel file servers; eliminating the need to purchase and install
new equipment; and eliminating the need for IT staff to be onsite. The
larger offices chose SQL Server that is better designed to handle the
level of data volume and number of concurrent users they have. However
using SQL Server meant purchasing and coordinating the installation of
dedicated database servers. As it turned out, they could not do this
within the time frame that had been set for the initial rollout of the new
application. GDO saved the day by allowing them to make the initial
rollout to the larger offices with an Access MDB and then switching to SQL
Server as it could be made available. This enabled them to quickly rollout
the new application in all offices nationwide, meeting their initial
target dates for delivery. |